Damien Hirst, born in 1965 is and English artist that is famous for this themse of death in his work. His most famous works are the dead animals such as sheep, cow and shark. He believes that art is about responding to your surroundings, and that it is continuous. Ideas are neverending. Although his work is somewhat desturbing, and I personally don’t enjoy looking at it, I think it is important. Due to the sale for his preserved dead shark, titled “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.” he is now the second most famous living artist. The shark is inside a glass case that isn’t much larger than the 14 foot shark. When I fisrt saw this work a few years ago, I didn’t even realize the shark was dead (which goes to show how naive I can be sometimes). It doesn’t look dead, it apears as if still alive unable to move in the tiny glass case. Because Hirst is a conceptual artist, his piece is based mostly on the idea behind it, that everything can remain living as long as we want it to be. He has been criticied his preservation of dead animals is not art and anyone could make that kind of work. His response “But you didn’t, did you”. The fact that he is being accused of making phony art work brings us back to the first blog post regarding Marcel Duchamps work, What is Art?

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I googled the shark piece that you talked about about, and I found it to be very realistic looking as well. I didn’t think it looked like it was swimming but kind of like stopped in time. I don’t know what art is, however, I found this piece to be very cool, and if he wants to call it art, then I say go for it.

I saw the Shark exhibit. It was one of the more interesting pieces of art there and attracted a lot of people. For that reason, I think it is art. It brought people together to look at something from different points of view. It makes people stop and think about what they are seeing. Art is an expression of ones own point of view. If Hirst thought he had a unique view concerning the shark, then he had created art. Clearly, his work has created a lot of controversy, and I think that that is the mark of a good artist.

Yes, his artwork doesn’t sound too appealing, but I don’t think someone can go say that it isn’t art. When you talk about the question “What is art?” for me, I think of the discussion that they had in Mona Lisa Smile about art. Why is one thing art and another one isn’t? Who gets to decide what’s art or not? This type of thing that this artist does, isn’t my cup of tea, but if he believes in his artwork, then it is art.

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